December 23 - Church for the Unchurched

Introduction. So far, this is the book that I have enjoyed the most. In Church for the Unchurched, Dr. George G. Hunter examines the commonalities between nine ‘apostolic’ American churches which are experiencing high levels of effectiveness compared to common, declining church models. Hunter calls the greater Christian Church to release their traditional practices in order to re-embrace their traditional mission: to exegete a church’s given culture and develop an evangelical response to that culture based on cultural relevance, lay driven ministries, seeker services, and small groups.

Cultural Relevance. Too many times to Christian leaders, the case is made for cultural relevance and the baby seems thrown out with the bathwater. Ancient Christian traditions and modes of discourse, central to historic Christianity, are thrown to the side for a passing spasm of feeling; all the while the preacher lectures new converts that our faith must be independent of our feelings. The leadership advantage that one gains from reading Church for the Unchurched is a solid biblical and historical basis for cultural relevance. I would like the leaders of my future church to read this book, however, in a pinch, Hunter’s historical work on pages 60-69 will do. Also, Hunter’s exegesis of scripture and Church history transcends the idea that contemporary worship should be a Willow Creek or Saddleback rock concert. Leaders benefit from hearing Hunter’s point that relevance may manifest itself in any way that communicates of the gospel.

Seeker Services. While this topic fits under the umbrella of cultural relevance, the weekly worship service is the bedrock of many models of church that have emerged in Christian history; this is certainly so in the broad spectrum of American culture. Hunter does his best biblical and historical exegesis in the area of worship. What I need as a leader facing an entrenched, traditional church, unwilling to change, is to show how traditional a seeker service actually is. This is the difference that Hunter makes in my ministry of worship.

Small Groups. Hunter also delves deep into the eternal need for apostolic churches to develop effective small groups to the encouragement of the faithful, the up-building of new converts, and safe places for seekers. Again, Hunter is most helpful to leadership by exegeting to biblical and historical models for small groups. The shear volume of information that Hunter presents is astounding. I would have preferred a comparison contrast that gave the positives and negatives of each type of small-group set up. It was difficult to digest all the material that he gave. I would like to hear more about how leadership relates to small groups in class.

Lay Ministries. Hunter again makes the case, through scriptural and historical exegesis, that all effective revivals are characterized by lay ministry. He then goes on to give a catalogue of lay ministries that are possible when the people of God are empowered and released for the work of ministry. The most helpful part of this section was the discussions of how lay people could be enfolded and incorporated into the process of pastoral care. Contrary to myth, Hunter does not advocate a pastor abandoning the role of care giver. Rather, he calls the church to care for itself.

Final Thoughts. The great gift that Hunter gives to leaders is the re-baptism of the term ‘apostolic.’ While the term is mainly co-opted by fly-by-night store-front churches, Hunter reconnects the term to its biblical and historic roots. Churches that follow the apostolic paradigm contained in this book, “believe that they and the church are ‘called’ and ‘sent’ by God to reach an unchurched pre-Christian population” (28).

The blessing of this book is that it is so packed with data and information. It is a nice change from books of this type that are more fluff than substance. The curse of this book is that it is starting to get a little dated. His ideas about ‘baby-busters’ were nascent in 1995. Now eleven years later, the trends among my generation are developing. I would like to have heard more about that. I would be very interested to hear opinions or at least receive direction to resources on emerging worship and ministry to ‘Generation X’ in our class.